SAN DIEGO -- Ex-Councilman George Stevens is ineligible to run for the 4th District City Council seat vacant since the Aug. 8 death of Charles L. Lewis, according to a legal opinion the city attorney issued Tuesday.

Term limits in the City Charter prevent Stevens, who held the seat from 1991-2002, from holding the office for more than two consecutive four-year terms, according to City Attorney Casey Gwinn.

Voters approved term limits in June 1992, but that did not apply to Stevens until he entered his second of three terms in December 1995, according to Assistant City Clerk Joyce Lane.

The rules of the charter would only allow Stevens to run for the unfulfilled District 4 seat if the term were less than two years.

Because the City Council decided to hold a special election on Nov. 16, Stevens' theoretical term would last for longer than the two years the charter anticipates.

In a quirk of timing, had the panel voted to hold the special election on Nov. 30, as Mayor Dick Murphy recommended, Stevens would have been eligible to run and hold the office, according to Gwinn.

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"Permitting Mr. Stevens to seek the office where one set of circumstances would make him ineligible -- even though under another he would be eligible -- would render the election process a shambles, and potentially disenfranchise the voters of Council District 4," Gwinn wrote.

If one candidate does not get more than 50 percent of the vote Nov. 16, a runoff would be held Jan. 4.

"I'm not counting on winning. I'm just counting on being one of the top two in the primary," Stevens said today. "And if I'm one of the top two in the primary, then you have to have a runoff on January 4th. Well on January 4th, I would be eligible."

Girard said the decision was not driven by politics.

"Our opinion was rendered without regard to who it would benefit, or who it would hurt," he said during the City Council's lunch recess.

Lewis, who was 37, died of internal bleeding brought on by cirrhosis of the liver, according to the San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office.

On Sept. 7, the San Diego City Council voted 5-3 to hold a special election on Nov. 16 to fill the vacant seat.

A day later, a Superior Court judge refused to consolidate the special election with the general election on Nov. 2, or to call for a special election to be held before Nov. 16.

Some residents of the 4th District argued that the special election should be consolidated or held concurrently with the Nov. 2 general election to avoid disenfranchising voters.